


All In The Execution

by steveelotaku



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen, One Year Later, Spoilers, Spoilers for Lost Light 25, The Transformers: Lost Light, The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye (IDW), eulogy, megatron - Freeform, there's some Minimus/Megatron here if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 09:25:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16595204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steveelotaku/pseuds/steveelotaku
Summary: Minimus Ambus writes a eulogy for Megatron, one year after his execution.





	All In The Execution

ALL IN THE EXECUTION

By Minimus Ambus (FKA Ultra Magnus, Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord)

First off, I apologize for the title—I fear that my fellow Lost Lighters have rubbed off on me in certain aspects of humour. However, I felt it appropriate, given the circumstances which we now deal with.

It has been precisely one year since Megatron’s execution. On the one year anniversary of that date, I sit in my office, overlooking a very nice piece of Tetrahexian real estate being constructed by some of the Lunarians forged not so very long ago. The stars above Cybertron are beautiful indeed, in the few places you can make them out above the harsh artificial lighting. I take a look at my shelf, too, and I see a very worn copy of _Towards Peace._

I ask myself, “Who was Megatron?”

I’m certain most of Cybertron could provide an answer for you. Tyrant. Genocidal militant. Revolutionary. Miner, if you’re perhaps old enough to remember the old days of Functionalism. Still others might say a poet.

He was all of these things, and yet none of these by itself is enough to sum up the man.

When I first was informed he would be joining the crew of the _Lost Light_ , I was immediately filled with reservations. When he was co-captain of the ship, I confess that I mentally formulated contingency plans nigh-constantly. After all, this was _Megatron!_ Scourge of Simanzi! The bot who defined “Peace Through Tyranny!” The original Decepticon!

This changed when I began to work with him.

Something had changed, I thought. Maybe it was Ratchet’s little tricks. Maybe it was the threat of death over his head. Maybe that little Autobrand on his chest was giving him second thoughts.

For the first time in a very long time, I could see Megatron as something other than the boogeyman young Cybertronians were warned about, something other than a grand tyrant who led armies of such gruesome individuals as Killmaster and the Decepticon Justice Division.

I looked into those crimson optics and I saw a tired, regretful bot who had lived for far too long, and seen far too much. Moreover, I saw a misguided idealist who had been so determined to see his dreams come true that he kept going even when they became nightmares.

I suppose, at first, that I liked him because he was quiet, neat, and orderly. He didn’t make terrible jokes like Swerve, and he didn’t have Whirl’s appetite for raw chaos, nor Brainstorm’s affinity for making improbably dangerous weaponry. Instead, he read, he gazed out the ship’s windows, he sat back and took stock.

Every single opportunity he had to escape, he rejected. When he could have sided back with his own Justice Division, he instead offended them by embracing pacifism and begging for our lives in exchange for his.

This was not a bloodthirsty tyrant. This was not evil incarnate.

And I struggled. I struggled because for the first time, against every bit of wartime understanding, I could finally be within arm’s reach of the one behind everything and not want to strangle him.

Some wondered why I defended him at the trial. Some wondered why I trusted him and gave testimony that spoke of heroic deeds in other universes.  After all, he had fled from my justice, hadn’t he?

To explain, I offer this quote from Rewind’s excellent _A Comprehensive History of the Functionist Universe:_

“Megatron had not fled. Megatron had been, as the Earth people say, ‘shanghaied.’…Though he had not willingly come there, he took well to his role in the Functionist Universe—a revolutionary. Through his actions, billions were saved, and one of the greatest threats to all life in the galaxy was vanquished. His poetry once more lifted up the oppressed—but not to oppress others. His speeches once more raised up the banners of rebellion—but not with the guns and swords of the Great War.  In this world, Orion Pax and Megatron were brothers in arms, not mortal enemies. In this world, the words “Towards Peace” actually meant something—not the emptiness of a violent crusade, but a genuine promise of peace, equality, and redemption.  The organic-hating, fearful tyrant who masked insecurity with violence was gone, and in his place stood a bot that every bit deserved the adulation his Decepticons had once given him.”—Rewind, _A Comprehensive History of the Functionist Universe, Volume II: Towards Peace, Again_ (available from Ja-Ro Publications _._ )

When Megatron was executed, some might remember hearing the recording of his last words:

“Peace Through Empathy.”

Those same words are engraved on the plain white stone tomb sitting on the bottom floor of Cybertron’s highest seat of government, guarded by Legislators. Specifically, the epitaph reads:

PEACE THROUGH EMPATHY

YOU FLARE, YOU FLICKER, YOU FADE

MEGATRON OF TARN

The second line is from a poem most of us have read at some point or another—it was originally authored by Megatron, but published anonymously. It was one of the last things he confessed to me, and one of the many reasons I discarded the Magnus Armour.

Megatron flared with the flames of revolution. He flickered as he abandoned his ideals and became a tyrant.

I watched him die, telling me once more that he deserved far worse than his sentence, those optics of his still burning with regret…but even as his body died, all pigmentation fading from his already grey body, I realized something, and that something is why I’m writing to you today.

Megatron did not fade away as he predicted he would—it was his leadership that helped bring us a new Cybertron, and it was his courage that saved us from another plague of Functionists. History tried to erase him.  First, it was Starscream at the initial hearing. Getaway tried again on our voyage. And even now, some officious bureaucrat with a fetish for the blood and thunder of the Great War is doubtless flipping tables over the fact I’m giving my sympathies to a former tyrant.

No matter what his sins, you cannot deny one thing:

Megatron shone more brightly than ever at his trial.

He did not fade.

And Primus willing, he never will.


End file.
